Asked by: Ben Lake (Plaid Cymru - Ceredigion)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many cases of scam telephone calls using number spoofing were reported in each of the last five years.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office does not hold any data on the number of scam telephone calls using number spoofing.
Ofcom recently published their experiences of suspicious calls, texts and app messages survey, conducted on 31st January and 1st February 2024 (2,202 UK adult respondents). Mobile and landline users were asked if they had ever received a call that looked like it was from a genuine source but then became suspicious that it was not genuine. 35% reported having received a call on their landline and 50% reported having received a call on their mobile of this nature.
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/excel_doc/0025/281158/data-tables-2024.xlsx
NB: These figures cannot be combined as some users may have received both suspicious call on their mobile and landline and do not provide answers on the number of spoofing calls in the last five years.
Asked by: Ben Lake (Plaid Cymru - Ceredigion)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 8 March 2024 to Question 16407 on British Nationality, whether his Department has made an assessment of the compatibility of the policy on British citizenship from birth for a person born between 2 October 2000 and 29 April 2006 with obligations under the Equality Act 2010.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
The British Nationality Act 1981 sets out how a person, born in the UK, may be a British citizen at birth, requiring that at least one parent is either settled here or British themselves. We are content that the determination of citizenship for children born to EEA nationals during the period cited is in keeping with that statute and does not breach any equalities obligations.
Asked by: Ben Lake (Plaid Cymru - Ceredigion)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether his Department is taking steps to support (a) businesses and (b) other organisations whose numbers are used by (i) nuisance callers and (ii) criminals in number spoofing scams.
Answered by Tom Tugendhat - Minister of State (Home Office) (Security)
A central pillar of the Government’s Fraud Strategy is blocking individuals and groups from attempting to impersonate other organisations and institutional bodies. As part of this work, the Government has introduced a new measure to the Criminal Justice Bill to strengthen law enforcement capabilities to tackle scam text messages. The Bill will create a new offence for supplying or possessing “SIM farm” devices (which allow criminals to send scam texts to thousands of individuals and businesses at the same time), without good reason or undertaking adequate due diligence.
In addition, the Government and Industry have signed the Telecommunications Fraud Sector Charter, a voluntary agreement to improve counter-fraud efforts. As a result of the Charter, the sector has introduced firewalls that detect and stop scam texts from reaching customers. Since January 2022, the firewalls have stopped 960 million scam text messages.
Law enforcement are also working tirelessly to tackle criminal number spoofing operations at source. Last year, Operation Elaborate led by the Metropolitan police took down iSpoof, a website that was used to make 10 million spoof calls impersonating individuals and businesses. The international joint action led to 142 arrests and the main administrator of the website was sentenced to 13 years and 4 months of imprisonment.
In April this year, in another successful joint operation codenamed Stargrew, the Met took down LabHost; a major criminal website, which fraudsters used to create over 40,000 fake phishing websites impersonating businesses. So far the operation has led to 37 arrests, and over 25,000 victims in the UK have been contacted.
Asked by: Ben Lake (Plaid Cymru - Ceredigion)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, for what reason it is his policy that a person born between 2 October 2000 and 29 April 2006 is only considered to have British citizenship at birth if their British citizen father was married at the time of their birth to their EU citizen mother.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
Between 1 January 1983 and 30 June 2006, a child could only obtain British citizenship through their father if the parents were married. The law changed on 1 July 2006 to allow a person to acquire citizenship through their father, irrespective of whether the parents were married, subject to proof of paternity.
The 2006 change only affects children born after 1 July 2006: the earlier law continues to apply in relation to people born before that date. The change was not made retrospective, to avoid altering a person’s status after their birth without allowing them to make an informed choice about acquiring British citizenship.
A person born before 1 July 2006 can register as a British citizen if they would have become a British citizen automatically had their parents been married. Those applying under this route do not have to pay a registration fee.
Asked by: Ben Lake (Plaid Cymru - Ceredigion)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether he has received representations from (a) the police and (b) other bodies on the rounding of kitchen knives as a means of reducing the risk of injury in knife offending in domestic residential settings.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office does not hold the requested data. Statistics on knife or sharp instrument offences may be found as part of the Office for National Statistics release: Crime in England and Wales: year ending September 2023.
There are no plans at present to commission specific research to provide a data set about prevalence of knife / sharp instrument offending in domestic residential settings.
The Home Office regularly considers representations about knife crime and knives from interested parties including the police, Members of Parliament and members of the public. This has on occasion included representations about round tipped kitchen knives reducing the risk of injury.
Asked by: Ben Lake (Plaid Cymru - Ceredigion)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if he will commission research into the prevalence of offending with (a) knives and (b) other sharp instruments in domestic residential settings.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office does not hold the requested data. Statistics on knife or sharp instrument offences may be found as part of the Office for National Statistics release: Crime in England and Wales: year ending September 2023.
There are no plans at present to commission specific research to provide a data set about prevalence of knife / sharp instrument offending in domestic residential settings.
The Home Office regularly considers representations about knife crime and knives from interested parties including the police, Members of Parliament and members of the public. This has on occasion included representations about round tipped kitchen knives reducing the risk of injury.
Asked by: Ben Lake (Plaid Cymru - Ceredigion)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many offences involving (a) knives and (b) other sharp instruments were recorded in a (i) domestic residence and (ii) non-domestic setting by each police force in England and Wales in the last year for which information is available; and if he will provide a breakdown of those figures by the gender of the victim.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office does not hold the requested data. Statistics on knife or sharp instrument offences may be found as part of the Office for National Statistics release: Crime in England and Wales: year ending September 2023.
There are no plans at present to commission specific research to provide a data set about prevalence of knife / sharp instrument offending in domestic residential settings.
The Home Office regularly considers representations about knife crime and knives from interested parties including the police, Members of Parliament and members of the public. This has on occasion included representations about round tipped kitchen knives reducing the risk of injury.
Asked by: Ben Lake (Plaid Cymru - Ceredigion)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether her Department consulted with university researchers when developing its policy on migration.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The Home Office regularly engages with a range of stakeholders when developing policy.
We keep all our immigration policies under constant review to ensure they best serve the UK and reflect the public’s priorities.
Asked by: Ben Lake (Plaid Cymru - Ceredigion)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many individuals born in the UK between 2 October 2000 and 29 April 2006 to a British citizen father and an EU citizen mother have (a) submitted applications for naturalisation as their parents were unmarried at the time of their birth and (b) been granted British citizenship.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The data is not available. Immigration statistics are published as Migration statistics. Whilst these include statistics for naturalisation as a British citizen, they do not identify the status of the applicants’ parents.
Asked by: Ben Lake (Plaid Cymru - Ceredigion)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many instances of thefts of goods and cargo from HGVs stationary at (a) rest stops and (b) other locations have been reported in the last 12 months.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office collects and published data on incidents of theft from commercial vehicles and theft of commercial vehicles as part of the Commercial Victimisation Survey. The department also collects data on the number of incidents of theft from vehicles, including from HGV’s, which have been reported to the police.
Neither source provides the information at the level of detail requested. The Home Office does not collect information on whether the vehicle was stationary at the time of the incident or the type of location.
Concerning trends in theft more generally, the latest estimates from the Crime Survey for England and Wales for the year ending December 2022 show that overall incidents of theft affecting the household population of England and Wales were down by 47% compared with the year ending March 2010.